Kathleen Wynne explains why she wants to remain premier for at least two more years: She needs more time on the economy.

Kathleen Wynne, politician who has spent most of her career stressing social justice by redistributing the pie, she now finds herself trying to grow that pie. But the economic recipe remains elusive, writes Martin Regg Cohn.

The economy doesn’t keep Kathleen Wynne awake at night. She just wakes up to it at 5:45 every morning, fighting shadows during her daily run in the pre-dawn darkness.

“When I wake up, it’s worrying about those issues,” the premier confesses during an interview dominated by Ontario’s economic troubles.

A politician who has spent most of her career stressing social justice — by redistributing the pie — she now finds herself trying to grow that pie. But the economic recipe remains elusive:

Unemployment is stuck at 7.5 per cent. Ontario’s economic growth this year is tumbling to 1.3 per cent, down from 1.7 per cent in earlier projections. Without a strong recovery, Wynne can’t achieve the higher tax revenues she is counting on to slay the budget deficit while maintaining her political and fiscal credibility.

How to persuade Ontarians that she’s up to the job of putting the province to work?

Wynne acknowledges that’s how she’ll be judged as premier in the next election, whenever it comes.

“I think the ballot questions are going to be about jobs,” she says.

Perhaps that explains why the premier is now promising to go beyond the seemingly endless stream of conversations, consultations, discussions and connections that have marked her first few months in power.

“I have to be able to demonstrate that we have made decisions, and we have taken steps that have put us on a solid footing,” she said during a day-long swing through southwestern Ontario, where she heard recurring fears of a fragile recovery from farmers, entrepreneurs and workers.

Interviewed between stops travelling to and from Brantford, Wynne acknowledged that she must shake her image of all talk, no action.

“I take this stuff seriously, and I get it,” she says. “People just want to know that I’ve got it under control.”

And that the economy is improving. If not, voters will revert to the image of Wynne as weak on economic matters.

Under Sousa, the treasury has pledged to respect a fiscal plan that eliminates the $11.7-billion budget deficit by 2017-18. But cuts can only go so far. The key is raising revenues.

“If we’re going to stay within the fiscal plan, revenue is a challenge,” Wynne concedes. “And if we don’t get our revenues up, it’s going to be very difficult.”

The premier has tasked her economic team to spur new spending by corporations sitting on stashes of cash. Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney identified $500 billion in lazy money — most of it in Ontario — that could be put to work bolstering research and development while boosting productive investments.

“The work that we’re doing right now is to try to light a fire under business,” Wynne says.

But what’s the plan? When will she make it work? How does she dislodge that dead cash?

“Well, I don’t know exactly,” she says, choosing her words carefully. “You know, we’re not there at this point. But that’s the kind of question I’ve asked the finance folks to look at.

“How could we use some of the things that we’re already doing to push, and work with, and nudge, and encourage the private sector to make the investments that we know need to be made? And there can be incentives and disincentives for doing that, right?”

One issue that comes up throughout her road trip is the minimum wage. Farmers, owners, managers all caution her against acceding to a grassroots campaign to raise it from the current $10.25 an hour to $14. At each stop, Wynne reassures her audience by saying any increases must come in a gradual, non-political way — based on inflation and productivity, not ad hoc hikes.

It is a dramatically different tone, coming from the premier, than she might have adopted in earlier incarnations fighting for social justice. Now, she frets publicly about the minimum wage as the dreaded “job-killer” if there’s a sudden jump.

“I worry that that kind of sharp increase in the minimum wage over a short period of time would be a job killer,” she tells me. “We have no interest in that, because I believe that we would lose jobs.”

As her road trip winds down, Wynne tells me she needs more time to get the job done — perhaps another two years to follow through on an economic agenda: She wants the minority legislature to serve out a full four-year term.

It was two years ago that Dalton McGuinty won re-election, and seven months ago that he resigned in a storm of controversy over cancelled gas plants — a legacy that will return to haunt Wynne again Tuesday when the auditor general issues revised figures for the relocation costs.

Propped up by the opposition parties, the Liberals reached the half-way point of their minority mandate this week. Doubtless, Wynne is mindful that the worst day in power is better than the best day in opposition.

“I’m going to work to keep the minority parliament as long as we can,” she muses. “The (full) term would be to October 2015, and if we can do that, then we will do it. I think it’s possible.”

Will she gain that much time in power? In politics, as in economics, timing is everything.

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